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Tomorrow, Julia and I are taking our first real vacation in ten years. Our last one was our honeymoon. After that we took trips—to San Diego and to Indiana to visit family, day trips to Florence, the Wildlife Safari or the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, and occasional overnights to Portland or Bend. But this is the first real drop everything, take a week away, and have a real vacation since before our Anna was born.

We all need a break from the routine. We all need time to exhale.

So we’re going to the Oregon Coast. We’ll head up to Portland tomorrow, then after Mass at the Grotto we’ll drive out to Astoria Sunday afternoon. From there, we’ll spend the next four days working our way down the North and Central Coast, from Seaside to Florence, and returning home on Thursday night.

Anna is looking forward to it and so are we. I’ll be writing every evening—in a journal, not online—but otherwise I’ll be soaking it all in.

The blog will still be here when I get back, and I hope you will be too. (In the meantime, I’d love it if you checked out some of the 594 other posts I’ve published since December, 2010.)

Later this morning, we’re off to a Fourth of July parade, an annual visit to our tree, an afternoon of packing for our trip, a family dinner, and fireworks shortly after dusk.

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Summer is here! And the blog is slowing down just a bit as we prepare for my dad to to fly up from San Diego tomorrow and visit us for the week. But there’s still a lot going on elsewhere on the blogosphere, and here’s some of best.

That one day, we will all hold hands and D A N C E in heaven, like birds on trees, being moved by the warm magnolia breeze, like purple annuals and yellow perennials growing in the same garden of love.